Why?

Lobbyists representing car dealers told them that a recent Ohio Supreme Court decision would open the floodgates of litigation and allow consumers to line their pockets with court winnings.

What the Supreme Court actually did was knock down a rogue court of appeals decision that said defrauded consumers couldn't sue for noneconomic damages.

The Supreme Court simply said that lower courts were acting within the law when they awarded triple damages for stress and humiliation to consumers who proved they were victims of deceptive or unconscionable sales tactics.

This is something the law has allowed for the last 30 years.

The floodgate rusted open a long time ago, and there never was a flood.

Most businesses simply aren't out there defrauding people.

But a few do. The damage provisions of the Consumer Sales Practices Act are aimed at them.

So couples tricked into predatory loans can sue for the humiliation of losing their homes to foreclosure.

So senior citizens ripped off by fly-by-night contractors can be compensated for the anguish of dealing with shoddy repairs.

So customers who are cheated on car lots have recourse.

But the legislature didn't listen to any of those folks.

Nope, in a spectacular display of arrogance and cynicism, it arranged this whole thing so the public wouldn't realize it had been swindled out of both the Sales Practices Act and the predatory-lending law until the deed was done.

Here's how the legislature pulled it off: At the last minute, a House committee rewrote an unrelated bill that had already passed the Senate, ensuring there would be no public hearings. The rewrite could simply fly through the House for a vote and then back to the eagerly waiting Senate for a quick concurrence vote.

When Attorney General Jim Petro dispatched an attorney to the Statehouse, testimony in hand, to defend the existing law, he was invited to sit down and shut up. And then House Speaker Jon Husted had the audacity to say that Petro "wasn't part of the debate."

"He didn't sit through the hearings, so he doesn't know what he's talking about," Husted said.

There was no debate for Petro - the public official charged with enforcing the Sales Practices Act - to be part of.

Or any of the rest of us.

Thanks to the legislature, non- economic damages will be capped at $5,000. A court won't be able to triple that figure - as it can now - to teach fraudulent businesses a lesson.

Our fate rests in the hands of Gov. Bob Taft.

Unless he vetoes Substitute Senate Bill 117 within 10 days after it hits his desk, it will become law.

Urge Taft to use his veto. Call him at 614-644-4357. E-mail him through   http://governor.ohio.gov/ contactinfopage.asp

Democracy shouldn't be a shell game.

To contact Sheryl Harris call 216-999-6344 or sherylharris@plaind.com

© 2006 The Plain Dealer

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